Finesse

I have expressed this before in workshops I have taught, but I think this quote is much more eloquent:

You are not learning how to do steps. You are learning about control and discipline; both the discipline of force and learning to be focused and to concentrate. I look at it as a wonderfully sensitizing process, because to get it right means that you are paying tremendous attention to detail and to a particular physicality. Your awareness of where you are in space is a tremendous asset. (Harkarvy in Hunt, 1992, pp. 54-55)

This quote is from the book "Psychology of Dance".

The discipline of force... think about this one. An analogy I like to make is "driving a car". When you accelerate, you don't just push the gas pedal all the way down. You push the gas pedal just enough to get the car going; you guage how much acceleration you need. When you need a faster acceleration, you push the gas pedal down more. But during the course of a drive, you have the gas pedal down in varying degrees and there are stops. This is the same thing in the muscular aspect of dance. You use your muscles in varying degrees and there is a time to relax those muscles too.

Lily
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